Tennis club plans to bounce back

The Paeroa Tennis and Squash Club is encouraging more community involvement in the sports after two years of Covid-19 faults.
Committee member Shane Mitchell told The Profile membership and tennis activity at the club had “taken a hammering” due to Covid-19 and he encouraged the public to become involved to keep active and potentially boost membership.
“The first step is we could look at membership, community involvement and getting people connected, and the easiest way to do that was create an open day.”
The club held an open day on October 9, which was attended by around 15 children and 10 adults, who were able to see what the club looked like and what it could offer, he said.
“They absolutely loved it. It wasn’t just about hitting the ball, it was reaction skills and all those things and there were also fun team building games.”
Shane encouraged more people to attend open days the club planned to hold and participate in a team tennis social event held on Monday nights.
“It’s really taken off… this year we are fully stacked with 24 teams in all divisions with four people running every Monday night which is just brilliant,” he said.
Shane said the club had also partnered with tennis coach Sven van Touw, who directed a regional initiative called Core Tennis to re-energise tennis clubs in Paeroa, Waihī, Waihī Beach and Katikati.
Sven said he established Core Tennis after he noticed tennis in the area was organised differently compared to his homeland in The Netherlands.
“We need to make the tennis courts more attractive to our communities again, and one of the core issues we have at the moment in small towns is we don’t have a whole lot of people,” he said.
“It wasn’t worth it for clubs to organise a lot because there weren’t a lot of people attending so it sort of headed into a downward spiral, organising less and less engagement.
“What I’m trying to build up here with those four clubs is a stronger base where people can have a much wider community of tennis players to play with and then we could get more engagement, activity, and draw more people in as well.”
Sven said he also offered coaching at the four clubs to promote “stronger interaction” between coaching and competition.
“Anyone who participates in coaching, I will try and offer them opportunities to have competitive play at their club or other clubs,” he said.
“Tennis is one of those sports for life, it’s a very balanced opportunity, it’s very healthy for you, it’s quite complex to learn, but it’s also known to be an extremely rewarding sport.”